![Las ma la](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Las_ma_la.jpg)
![Las pa ma la sheet music](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Las_pa_ma_la_sheet_music.jpg)
"La Pas Ma La" is the first
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
composition to be published by
minstrel
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...
performer
Ernest Hogan
Ernest Hogan (born Ernest Reuben Crowdus; 1865 – May 20, 1909) was the first African-American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show (''The Oyster Man'' in 1907) and helped to popularize the musical genre of ragtime.
A native of Bo ...
in 1895. With his troupe, the
Georgia Graduates
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
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* Related to the ...
, he performed a dance step and ditty with the name "Pasmala".
[Gushee, Lawrence]
"The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz."
Black Music Research Journal 14, no. 1 (1994): 1-24. doi:10.2307/779456.
Hogan created a comedy dance called the "La Pas Ma La" , which consisted of a walk forward with three steps back. In 1895, he wrote and composed a song based on this dance called "pasmala".
[''Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing'' by Mark Knowles, McFarland & Company, 2002, , pages 119-20.] The song's chorus was:
:Hand upon yo' head, let your mind roll back,
:Back, back back and look at the stars
:Stand up rightly, dance it brightly
:That's the Pas Ma La.
References
External links
La Pas Ma LaBox 141, Item 166 Lester Levy sheet music collection Johns Hopkins The Sheridan Libraries
1895 songs
Rags
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